Memories of Mummies in Cairo: An Interview with Actor Barry Sattels

"This was actually my second time being in Egypt. When I was into construction, mixing concrete and things I wound up traveling for a year all over Europe and the Middle East... Our hotel was opposite the pyramids, the major pyramids, and another 10 kilometers away was Saqqara... It's a strange place that's especially peculiar shooting nights there. I loved it there, a wonderful experience".

 

Barry Sattels is one of many Hollywood actors who never became a major name, but is a remarkably good and versatile performer still active in the entertainment industry. In the following interview, Mr. Sattels discusses in detail working on one of the 1980s most underrated and under-appreciated horror movies, the US-Egyptian co-production, DAWN OF THE MUMMY (1981). He also delves into his early theater work that molded his television and motion picture roles, as well as some of the other films he worked on. He also discusses his other interests and endeavors that reveal Mr. Sattels to be more than an actor, but a multi-talented man whose aptitude and skill level has built much more than a career in film and television. (Insert: Barry and company on MISFITS OF SCIENCE in 1986)

 

VENOMS5: What started your career as an actor?

 

BARRY SATTELS: I was in Philadelphia, which is where I'm from. I was in and out of college for about six years. I kept stopping at certain points and decided not to go back. After that I wound up meeting a guy who did landscaping; a real eccentric character. Oddly enough, he had a C-plane parked in front of his house by the Schuykill River that runs through Philadelphia. He did these really wild things with gardens. I worked with him, and simultaneously I was also working with a childhood friend of mine at the neighborhood Playhouse. He just came back from the Playhouse and he said he wanted to create something so that the actors have a common technique. He came from the same style of acting that Meisner teaches at the Playhouse in New York. So I said great. We'd actually done a few things before that. We'd done a play at the University of Pennsylvania and some other things. I got together with him and over the course of the next eight years, I was doing carpentry and various other types of construction; and in that time, I ended up being a teacher, the lead in practically all the plays we did, and from there I moved to New York where I worked on a soap opera. (Insert: Barry on SIMON & SIMON in 1983)

 

 

And after that, I ended up in California. A friend of mine from North Carolina, he moved out to Hollywood for years. He had a series on TV called CODE OF VENGEANCE (1986) and he brought me in to be on it. We shot in New Orleans. We did what they normally don't do which is a Roadshow; in other words, they picked up from New Orleans and went to shoot at some other location. They don't normally do that because it gets expensive for the studios to haul everybody and all the equipment here and there. It was a cool series, but it was canceled as the costs were too high... and DAWN OF THE MUMMY fits in between there, that movie was one of the first things I did out of New York. And when I came out here to California, I've been here ever since. (Top: Barry with Kate Jackson on SCARECROW AND MRS. KING in 1987; Insert: Rod Taylor, Barry and William Lucking on OUTLAWS in 1987)

V5: Were there any film actors that drove you to enter the film and television industry?

BS: At that moment, no. For me, it was about creating a common technique with the actors, it was about trying to create the greatest theater there ever was. I had my head set on that, and that had to do with my childhood friend, a man named Joe Alfred. We shared writing together, for many years, many artistic endeavors. It was a great union, it really was. And from there, my first on-camera work was on television doing a soap in New York, and guest starred on 40 different television shows out in California. I did do one film in Philadelphia, which was kind of interesting. I did some more theater, but once I started doing film work, I really got into it. It's a whole different experience because everything is new every time--the cast is new, the director is new, and so on. (Insert: Barry playing a stage actor on an episode of MASQUERADE in 1984)

 

V5: How did DAWN OF THE MUMMY come your way?

 

BS: I was cast for it in New York. It was a casting call. My agent told me about it and I went over and read for it. I was looking at the names connected with it, and I believe Mr. Agrama and his wife wrote the script. They gave me the role and told me, "You're about to go to Egypt" (laughs). I met the rest of the cast at the Hilton. We took a shuttle to the airport and off we went to Cairo. The first thing we did when we got there being the crazy actors we were, was go out and get some horses and we rode up to the pyramids (laughs)... which means we were out of it for two days at that point (laughs).

 

V5: Before you went to Cairo, what was your audition like?

 

 

BS: Sometimes you get a full script and sometimes you just get the sides. I think I only had the sides (script excerpts). The reason I got cast in it, which I reflect on once in a while... in the Repetition Technique, which is what they teach at the Playhouse, is that you just run with what you have. The guy who was working opposite me, he was up for the same part, but we were reading two different parts so they could watch us to choose who got the role. He kind of fumbled a bit, almost like he wasn't present. And I worked on that and ran with it, because that was the type of character I ended up playing; this photographer who's in charge of all these models so I did the audition like I was in charge and I got the part. 

 

 

So then, while I'm in New York, I called up three famous photographers. I said, "I'd love to come by and watch you shoot. I'm about to play a photographer shooting in Egypt", and they said for me to come on by. So I went to three different studios that night. All three were totally different. Some were really studious. One of them would play loud rock music the whole time. When he was finished shooting, when his camera was out of film, he would throw the camera up in the air and someone behind him would catch it and then hand him a camera loaded with film and he'd continue... (laughs), it was really wild (laughs)! So I tried to bring in some of the characteristics of all of them, although I'm not sure how much of it I was able to get in.

 

 

I remember the first day of filming was the three Bedouin's who enter the tomb. The cinematographer was Italian, Sergio Rubini and Frank Agrama, the director, was Egyptian. He ran Agrama Films, it was a big translating house. The Egyptians, they learned to speak English for business, French for entertainment, and they speak Farsi. They are intensely educated. This was actually my second time being in Egypt. When I was into construction, mixing concrete and things I wound up traveling for a year all over Europe and the Middle East. So I wound up in Cairo. I was in Luxor and Aswan and ended up there again filming DAWN OF THE MUMMY. It's a beautiful country and can be wonderfully exotic.

 

 

So Rubini, who supposedly worked with Fellini, is speaking Italian on the set; Frank Agrama is speaking Egyptian and English, and everybody else is speaking either English or Farsi. On the set, you'd hear two words a lot. One is just before you're about to shoot, you'd hear "Makesh", the Arabic word for "Makeup"; the same thing you'd hear on films in America when they call "Makeup", for the final touches they do before turning the camera on. And then as you're about to start filming, instead of saying "Shooting", they'd say "Sakoot", which is the Arabic equivalent. It's also the Arabic word for "Shut up".  

 

 

We shot in Saqqara. Our hotel was opposite the pyramids, the major pyramids, and another 10 kilometers away was Saqqara. You had to walk across the desert to get there. We did night shoots there for a week. In Saqqara they have what's called the Step Pyramids. It's a strange place that's especially peculiar shooting nights there. I loved it there, a wonderful experience. It's one of the great things about film, shooting on location. They treated you different there, too. They respected you because you were an American and they had great respect for American cinema. They took care of us over there. Shooting in Egypt has an ethereal quality about it, especially shooting at night. It was a great experience and a terrific film to work on over there.

 

V5: What was your impression of director Frank Agrama?

 

 

BS: Frank was great. He handled everything. A brilliant guy, he really was. I'd mentioned to you earlier about the husband and wife writing team. We had a different director in the beginning, a man named Armand Weston. After a day and a half of shooting we're told there's a delay over a contract dispute. I forget how long it lasted, but all of the actors are waiting at the hotel and we're told there's a contract dispute with the director. I don't know if things weren't happening the way he wanted, or what was agreed to, but he left the production; so Frank took over as director, and Sergio's behind the camera with him. After every shot, Sergio would say, "Good for me, good for you" (laughs). 

 

V5: Were there any difficulties during the filming?

 

 

BS: Just the logistics of shooting at night in certain places. I had to learn to drive a jeep sideways on a hillside. We had a lot of extras there, some of whom got hurt; production safety isn't that strong over there. Other than that it was great, it really was. I had a great time making it.

 

V5: The actor who played the Mummy remains the scariest mummy I've seen in these films. What are your memories of him?

 

 

BS: He was wonderful to work with. He had a disease that made him over seven feet tall. I don't think he lived very long. I had a great time working with him. For my death scene I had a prosthetic stomach made for me. It opened up and inside they put a bunch of rabbit guts and covered it with wax and put makeup on it. The mummy puts his hands on my throat, burning it before reaching into the stomach and pulling my guts out. They put a heating coil on his hand. So when he reached in it melted the wax and then he pulled out the rabbit guts.

 

V5: So you weren't buried partially in the sand at all? The appliance was attached to you?

 

BS: Yes, the only one that got hurt in the scene was the actor playing the Mummy. They didn't separate the coil from his hand, so it burnt the shit out of his hand. That was one of those stunts that got somebody hurt. He was a sweetheart of a guy. He'd been a freak all his life, so he had a quality about that. He was a very interesting guy.

 

V5: How long did it take to set up your death scene?

 

 

BS: It took a while. This was a night shoot. I was lying on the ground waiting while they were wrapping his hand with the coil in it. I laid there for about an hour. They eventually had to cover me with a blanket because it gets cold in the desert at night.

 

V5: Do you know if DAWN OF THE MUMMY played anywhere in America? It played everywhere else around the world.

 

 

BS: It played in New York, I believe on 42nd Street. I didn't go to see it when it was shown. I can't recall why I didn't go, or possibly I heard about it after it had played. The producers want their films to be shown so they can enter it in things. Kind of like how in some theaters they'll show a 15 minute short; that's to help somebody out so they can submit it for awards consideration, and to do so it has to have had a public viewing. Also, it's great press to say your film opened in New York.

V5: So after you finished DAWN OF THE MUMMY, you moved out to California and that's how you got back into television?

 

BS: I can't recall the name of the first series I did, but I worked on CAGNEY AND LACEY for two years. Having a character to regularly work with was great. We shot in a studio on 26th Street. We didn't shoot on a lot. Many TV programs are shot on a lot, and some location shots as well. CAGNEY AND LACEY shot a lot of their episodes at one studio in particular and they were the only program that shot there. It was this great old studio and they had it all to themselves, which was really cool. (Top: Barry with Sharon Gless and Stephen Macht on CAGNEY & LACEY in 1987; Insert: Barry as Tony Stantinopolis on C&L)

 

 

Another thing that was interesting about shooting there was working around the train schedule. The train was within 400 yards where the studio was. So they'd look at the schedule and say, "Okay, we've got the 11;05 coming in so we're gonna hold the shot... we're gonna hold". So you'd stand there and then you'd hear this "Woo Wooo Woooo" coming (laughs)... it passes and you'd hear "Okay, it's gone, let's go, let's go" (laughs). That was always fun. (Top and insert: Barry Sattels and Sharon Gless on C&L)

 

Also, we had a table reading each week. Everyone would sit around and read the script. The two girls, Sharon Gless and Tyne Daley would be there, the producer would be there, the director, and we'd all read it. It was like a family. And I was like an outsider in a way since you'd have all the cops there all the time and I was only there every four shoots, or whatever it was. I had a terrific time working on the show. (Top and insert: Barry as Tony Stantinopolis on CAGNEY & LACEY)

V5: What was the difference in shooting movies versus television?

 

BS: They're both wonderful. You're shooting the same way, basically. Sometimes when I was in a scene, talking out, or I was thinking, I'd look at someone out there and get this look back... (laughs) it was a good way to make you concentrate. So like I said, it's a lot of the same thing. Like a lot of films, you get back into a studio working on a set. Sometimes there's money crunches where you have to short-shrift things. (Top: Billy Drago and Barry in the racing thriller BANZAI RUNNER from 1987; Insert: Barry and Connie Sellecca in an episode of HOTEL from 1984)

 

 

I remember on one TV job... usually you come in and shoot a wide shot of a scene; and then get a close up on me and the other actors. You do a scene a few times, I'm giving him my lines, the other actor giving me their lines; they have all these close up shots they can cut to if they want to. I remember this one time they got so boxed in on time they shot everything that was on that side of the room, then turned the camera around and shot everything on the opposite side of the room, so they intermixed all the scenes (laughs). You're shooting your half of scenes 5,7, and 9; then all of a sudden it switches around and you're giving your lines to somebody else who's shooting the other side of 5,7, and 9. I can't recall the show, but I killed my father in that one, who played a Don... a famous actor. (Top: Barry and Randi Brooks in an AIRWOLF episode from 1985; Insert: Barry and Belinda Montgomery in an episode of FINDER OF LOST LOVES in 1985)

V5: Speaking of Don's, you played the main villain, a gangster character in a Cannon movie called NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET (1987). What was it like working for Cannon at that time?

BS: Those guys were terrific. The director of that movie, Jack Smight... you remember I told you earlier about the friend of mine from North Carolina who was working on the CODE OF VENGEANCE (1986) series in New Orleans? Jack Smight was directing it. Jack was a great director, he liked me and he hired me to do the part in NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET, working with Robert Carradine and Billy Dee Wiliams. I just saw Robert recently at a party about three weeks ago. 

V5: You were working with a lot of big names including Peter Graves and others in the main cast. Did you get to hang out much together?

 

BS: Peter Graves, no. Unless you bump into somebody having lunch or something, or you are doing a scene together, you don't always get time to mingle with them. Billy Dee was great. I was having trouble with a girlfriend at the time. I was down in the dumps one day. Billy Dee and I hadn't really spoken much and he comes by and says, "hey, what's up?"  I told him I had this going on and he listened to everything I said and gave his opinion on it... he's just a fantastic guy. A wonderful, big-hearted guy. I loved him.

 

We set up twice for my death scene and they wound up scrapping it for some reason, I can't remember what happened. I was supposed to be thrown from a building. It wasn't matching up due to bad weather so they had to re-shoot it. They didn't get the weather right the next night either because they were shooting from one side to the other side. At one point I was supposed to be taken out by a sniper. I do wish I had more scenes in the film. You needed to see my character doing things, more interaction with Billy Dee and Robert to make it more provocative. I remember they lost the film at one point, which may have been why they needed to do re-shoots and change things.

V5: You did a handful of erotic thrillers in the 1990s like THE PRICE OF DESIRE (1997). Did you have any apprehensions making films like that or was it like any other acting job?

 

BS: Like any other acting job. The director on that one, Paul Thomas, was connected with the biggest porn house in America located in Los Angeles. He made a lot of porn, Once a year he'd shoot a straight film, one that didn't have any hardcore sex in it. There were a lot of girls with their tits out, but no explicit sex; they'd get as close as they could, so that was the differentiation. Most everybody who worked on those films were all from the porn industry. A very interesting group of characters, they are. (Top: Barry in THE PRICE OF DESIRE [197]; Insert: Barry in LOVER'S LEAP [1995])

V5: You're married to actress Lisa London. You've worked together a few times. How did you two meet?

 

BS: We actually met through an actor named David Proval, who costarred with Robert De Niro in MEAN STREETS (1973). He was a teacher as well and is still acting today. We were both in the same class and that's how we met, initially. We married in 2001. (Top: De Niro and David Proval in MEAN STREETS; insert: Actress and Casting Director, Lisa London)

V5: Going back to DAWN OF THE MUMMY, have you seen it recently, and if so, how do you feel about it all these years later?

 

BS: The last time I saw it was a couple years ago. There are a few scenes I think to myself, "Hmmmm, I'm not sure if that worked or not" (laughs). Some of it I thought was pretty cool. It's interesting to go back to the day and remember a particular moment what I was thinking at that instance in time. You think about what could've worked differently, about what was happening around you. 

 

 

I met a guy once, I'd gone to his theater and was telling him I couldn't do a part because I had an audition for a TV show and he said he'd done 35 of them up to that time. At that point, I hadn't done many and I went "Wow", and he says, "Yeah... I never saw any of them" (laughs). How interesting is that? And I think of that because it's not about being critical of yourself, he just made a decision to not watch himself. It's common to not watch yourself on screen. When I'd first left Philadelphia I still had a lot of friends there who were interested in when I'd be on a show. What was great about that was because when I'd went back to Philadelphia and they'd seen me on TV last week they'd think I was around. It wasn't like 'here comes the guy from California who I haven't seen for 8 months'. That's one aspect of it, so I like revisiting for that reason.

V5: Have you seen any of your co-stars since you made DAWN OF THE MUMMY?

 

BS: John Salvo, I haven't seen for a while. We were great friends for a long time... I've not heard from John in quite a while. I've seen no one else in the cast in the years since so I don't know what they're doing now. Brenda... we got along great. George Peck... he was a bus driver in New York. They got all pissed off at him at one point, he wouldn't let people on the bus; he'd say "No you're not, no fare today". He was picking up people who were kind of destitute and letting them ride around the city for free... they got really pissed at him over that (laughs). Tough New Yorker, man... George. (Ahmed Rateb, Barry and John Salvo; Insert: Ellen Faison and George Peck)

V5: Do you have any other memories you'd like to share about making DAWN OF THE MUMMY?

 

BS: One memory was, I was talking about the three Bedouin's earlier, the ones who were coughing inside the tomb. I got to talking to one of them and found him to be an interesting personality. I discovered he was a stage actor who had just done King Lear on Broadway in Cairo. One evening he invited me to go with him into Cairo. Nobody else would go with me. So I went to Cairo to a cafe, watched people go by, and had a conversation with this guy who was a brilliant stage actor who'd made many Egyptian films who was now working on this American film playing a small part as a Bedouin coughing in a tomb.

V5: That was something of a happy accident--you being a theater actor and he being a theater actor having a conversation.

 

BS: It was interesting because I was there and nobody would come with me. Something else about working over there was you always had censors watching you in Cairo the entire time. They don't do it for their own films, just for foreigners shooting in Cairo. They were always around saying, "No, you can't do that". They make some really violent films in Egypt, but they approached nudity differently.

 

Another memory was we were invited to dinner by one of the major Egyptian cast members, an actor of note in Egypt. We were invited to his house, it was a traditional dinner; it might've been around 20 people there from the cast, and his friends were there. It was a lovely house in a large, wonderful room. At one point, the women got up and did their belly dancing. I think he already had some belly dancers there, but there were couples whose wives also danced. So when the wives got up and did their scarf dancing and things like that, which were very sexual movements, they then owned the entire room... they owned all the men. And when they went back to sit down they then went back to being a wife. You look at something like that--watching people having a handle on their culture. They know what their culture is and they respect its boundaries. And you suddenly feel like you're in this wonderful novel. In comparison, we get so confused in America about this and that.

V5: Are you still acting today?

 

BS: Yes, I am. I did a film about a month ago. They're doing a sequel so I'll be doing that one as well. I'm playing the same character. It's about this bunch of crazies who try to spook these people into not buying a house. It's a strange film and was a gas making it.

V5: I see you have another business, Los Angeles Landscapes?

 

BS: Yes, Los Angeles Landscapes. I design gardens. When I was doing construction for a while I was doing vertical concrete. Talk about dramatic, I loved doing that. I went back to doing landscaping. I also do CAD programs and work as a licensed landscape contractor and I also do architecture. I recently designed a house down at the beach. To build a house you have to know what it's going to look like. The style comes out of your choices, and your artistic temperament and all that. Aside from all the spaces and all the windows I specced out, there was this glass folding door that's ten feet across. It folds in on itself so you can open up the entire deck to the kitchen. I designed everything in the house. (Top: Barry with Linda Gray on DALLAS in 1985; Insert: Barry and Tom Selleck on MAGNUM, P.I. in 1987)

 

What else I do, the other aspect of that is you have to make sure the house will stand up and doesn't fall down; so I then take the design to an engineer who takes my drawings to the building department. They get the permits to start construction and that's how you build a house. (Top: Barry in his second AIRWOLF appearance in 1985, pictured with Art Hindle)

 

V5: Last question, how do you feel about horror cinema these days and do they appeal to you at all?

 

BS: I do like some horror films, but it was never a genre I followed very much. I'm not into the grisly style of horror so much. I'd written a script, which was sort of a horror film. I co-wrote it with a friend of mine who writes screenplays all the time. I'd taken a course in screenwriting at UCLA. You'd write a script by the time you got out. I had all the fundamentals down and I brought him in because he writes scripts all the time and he re-fashioned it. At one point we had somebody optioning it and then something happened with a similar film in the industry and he dropped it so we never resumed... that's the way it goes sometimes. (Insert: Barry as The Watcher, in the short-lived HBO thriller series, THE EDGE in 1989)

V5: Mr. Sattels, it's been a sincere pleasure discussing your life and career with you.

 

BS: Thank you. I haven't talked about these things, specific things, so it's been interesting looking back and thinking about what I was doing, putting it all into words and reminiscing of those moments.

An enormous Thank You to Mr. Sattels for taking time out of his schedule to do this interview. If you'd like to check out his Los Angeles Landscapes website, you can do so HERE.

If you've never seen DAWN OF THE MUMMY (1981) before, and you want to read a review, we have a newer, December 2024 write-up that you can read HERE.